TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage • Hacker News Board

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#361

Post by yoavm » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #323

adamc wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://qz.com/2023032/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-use/ Thanks for making me look at this. We should ban cryptocurrencies.

What you are proposing is an authoritarian regime that can control what software is permitted to be run. This is madness, and will doom humanity. There is a reason that free speech is such a critical component of free societies.

You don't have to control what software is permitted to run: you can just ban changing USD to Bitcoin and vice versa. Stop the exchanges. Most people aren't mining their own coins anyway.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#362

Post by nrp » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

_huayra_ wrote: post #289

akircher wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Work” doesn’t have to be wasteful. It could be based on the number of pieces of litter that were collected, the number of meals to the homeless that were served. It’s just easier to measure when work is something wasteful.

Let's hope someone comes up with a coin staked on the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere!

Kim Stanley Robinson proposes this in his recent novel, The Ministry for the Future. He mostly skips the details around how it would actually work though, beyond needing an enormous amount of human labor for verification. In real life, that would break the decentralization of it.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#363

Post by babypuncher » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

segphault wrote: post #327

noelherrick wrote: post #283

Gosh I wish Apple with their loads of cash and drive to have the highest performing chip would get big ole fabs on US and EU shores. The fact that a disputed country owns the best fabs is downright scary for the future of the world (add in that the disputing country is the next superpower).

TSMC is building a $12b manufacturing facility in Arizona that will be able to produce the 5nm chips used in Apple products. They are fully aware of the geopolitical risks and are taking responsible steps to mitigate them. To the extent that the higher unit prices help them cover those investments, I'm more than happy to pay whatever portion of the increase gets passed on to consumers.

Apple is already on 5nm. By the time that fab is built, Apple will want to be on 3 or 2nm

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#364

Post by Ekaros » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #55

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #32

Supply shortage is another way of saying demand excess. I don’t see much evidence that TSMC ever really slowed production, at least for their most advanced processes that are in high demand. This is yet another way we’re all forced to pay the price for cryptocurrency. As long as GPUs are profitable for mining, they will be purchased and put to work. The saddest part is that each additional GPU added to the mining net…

I agree with this but it's even worse than that. Estimates on Bitcoin energy usage put it at over 1TW now. I believe it was comparable to the energy consumption of Argentina. Advocates will defend this by saying most energy usage is renewable. This conjures the image of someone with a bunch of solar panels but the reality is that it's primarily hydro power because that's the cheapest. Thing is, in regions with cheap…

The renewable argument never made any sense to me. Electricity is mostly fungible if crypto wasn't using it something else would or it would be used instead fossil or it wouldn't be produced in first place. Every single one of those options much better than spending it on fairly useless speculative bubble asset...

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#365

Post by tedunangst » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

HenryKissinger wrote: post #345

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As parent indicated, they are machines that make chips.

How were the chip-making machines made before there were chip-making machines? Can't chip-making machines be made without chips? Yes. The very first one, at least, was made like that.

Nobody wants the chips made by the chipless chip making machines.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#366

Post by babypuncher » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

photon-torpedo wrote: post #42

temp8964 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just purchase a used one on eBay?

Prices for used GPUs are also inflated, though I think they have started to come down a bit. Once Ethereum moves to proof-of-stake (early 2022?) the market will probably get flooded with used GPUs.

I don't think proof-of-stake will actually work. Not because of any technical reasons, but because 95% of the people involved in crypto just see it as a free money printing machine. Once their hardware is no longer useful for mining, they will just move to some other proof-of-work crypto.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#367

Post by larkost » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

pjscott wrote: post #313

pbourke wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple’s move, a decade ago, to control their own silicon seems quite prescient.

They have their own chip designs, but the manufacturing is done by TSMC.

Very true. But they have hedged that very well with long-term contracts, so they are effectively first in line for most of their needs. I would guess that this is still biting them on some components (they have so many in so many products), but they appear to be riding through this pretty well.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#368

Post by thereddaikon » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

ozarkerD wrote: post #137

pcurve wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their margin is approaching 40%. They're basically printing money at this point. It's hilarious how a manufacturer can be so profitable nowadays.

Genuine question because I’m unfamiliar with the market. Why aren’t competitors undercutting these big players? 40% is ridiculous

There are three companies (TSMC, Samsung and Intel) that compete at the top end of chip fabrication in the whole world. One of them (Intel) didn't make chips for anyone but themselves until about 4 months ago. Preparing a semiconductor for a given companies fab process takes time. You cant just call them up and ask for however many units of your design. Its a months to year long process of your engineers working with their engineers to optimize your circuit design to work best with their methods.

Also there is only one supplier (ASML) in the entire world who makes a critical machine (extreme ultraviolet laser photolithography machine) needed for these cutting edge processes. It is unable to match the increased demand for their tools. And even if they were these super advanced might as well be magic machines have a lead time in years themselves as do the factories they go in to.

If you want to start marking modern semiconductors or increase your existing capacity to do so it isn't as simple as throwing a couple million at it and having it running in a few months. Its billions of dollars in a massive sterile factory using machines made by a handful of suppliers taking up acres of land and consuming impressive amounts of electricity and water to do so. Semiconductor fabs are massive sprawling industrial campuses https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13749/intel_kiryat_678_678...

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#369

Post by babypuncher » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #310

arduinomancer wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think speculators/retail investors really care about the decentralization properties?

Yes, I think the informed Bitcoin investor is well aware of the value that decentralized peer-to-peer censorship resistant electronic money brings to the table. I care. Everyone I know cares. The core developers care. The ecosystem cares. I think you are radically underestimating the value of such things.

I'm pretty sure most of them just see mining as quick easy cash. If people actually valued the decentralization aspect then more would be using it for day to day transactions rather than just speculative investments.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#370

Post by FairlyInvolved » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

akircher wrote: post #82

_huayra_ wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: is it possible to make a cryptocurrency that does not rely on some real-world scarce resource (e.g. chips, electricity, drive space)? This seems to be a cornerstone of what makes any crypto valuable in the first place (scarcity), and as long as that scarcity has real-world consequences, it seems like it would have the same result. Chia claimed to "Save the world from proof-of-work wastage", but it wo…

“Work” doesn’t have to be wasteful. It could be based on the number of pieces of litter that were collected, the number of meals to the homeless that were served. It’s just easier to measure when work is something wasteful.

It does if the reward is sufficiently large.

If BTC mining relied on pieces of litter being collected you'd get people spending $millions on factories to produce litter and vehicles to distribute it just so more could be collected. That sounds crazy to type out, but it's no stranger than the situation we currently find ourselves in. The most advanced tools man has ever created are being used to create chips with no practical value, but that are good for converting energy into tokens through pointless calculations.

I don't believe it is possible to create a proof of work system that is not a "proof of waste" once the reward is high.

Spare CPU cycles felt like a waste, that becomes dedicated processing, that becomes dedicated hardware, that eventually became designing custom hardware.